Disclaimer: Biblical fiction is based on actual events, but elements have been added to enhance storytelling. For the accounts this story is based on, please refer to the John 5:2-9.

Although Jesus caused a stir wherever he went, like in the Temple or the Pharisees’ houses, it wasn’t always in a bad way. The first time I saw him was before he became such a public enemy. 

Bethesda is just north of the Temple. It’s basically a couple of freshwater pools carved into the bedrock. When the Kidron flows with rainwater and snowmelt in the spring, it gets channeled into these two pools. There the water sits most of the year, stagnant, until it’s refreshed again the next spring. 

For whatever reason, Bethesda has a legend. It’s silly, really, but people believe it all the same. Every so often when the moon is full, the waters of Bethesda froth and foam, and the first diseased person to get down into the pool gets healed. They say an angel stirs the waters, but I think it’s just air bubbles escaping from the rock below. Jerusalem certainly isn’t short of diseased people, and with no hope of getting healed otherwise, they all congregate at Bethesda. The sick and the crippled of Jerusalem – of all Judea! – lay in the shade of these five porches, waiting for their chance to be healed, which never comes. There the bodies waste away. I imagine few relatives ever venture down to care for their sick family members. A man could lay dead for days before anyone realizes he’s long gone. Many of the unclaimed corpses just get thrown over the wall. 

Bethesda is as close to hell as I can imagine, but I figure even the residents of hell get more attention than the poor souls that end up gathered around those awful pools. It’s foul. It’s hopeless. It’s completely off-limits to any self-respecting Jewish man. But one day, Jesus paid a visit.

Rumors of his healings had taken the country by storm. Everybody knew someone who had journeyed northward to be healed by him. Sure enough, many came back well again, but I thought the fresh air and the exercise had more to do with their recovery than anything. When Jesus was back in Jerusalem, people mobbed him wherever he went, and he never seemed too busy to touch the untouchable. The healings were astounding. I don’t know how he did it. At first I thought it was all staged – clever actors playing a part. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time a “messiah” had done that. But eventually, thousands of healings later, I knew it couldn’t be an act. Some people I’d known for years came back healed from their longstanding diseases. For real. I couldn’t explain it. Even the Pharisees were baffled. 

I had to see it for myself.

One day I followed Jesus out of the Temple in disguise. His procession wandered out the Horse Gate into the Kidron, then hiked up the ravine northward, toward Bethesda. He paused briefly by the pile of bodies outside the wall, all rotting and bloated in the sun. The smell was unbearable, but Jesus wasn’t phased by it. He knelt down and touched the foot of one of the corpses. I fully expected it to jump up and start walking away! But it didn’t move. Jesus just laid a sad hand on it, seemingly lost in thought. What’s he doing? Praying for the dead? Whatever he was up to, he was certainly contaminating himself in the process. Touching the unclean made a man unclean himself. A corpse even more so. Jesus was always unclean, just one of the many reasons we didn’t like him in the Temple. He couldn’t keep his hands off filthy people! 

Before long he carried on, and his whole entourage filed in through the narrow doorway to Bethesda. I was about to follow when one of his disciples came rushing out again. His face was gray and green. Two steps out, he vomited everywhere. Then three others came out and also started retching. Undeterred, I covered my nose with my cloak and ventured inside.

I’d never actually been inside Bethesda before. A Temple guard must always be ceremonially clean or else he can’t perform his duties. Often in our job we have to come into contact – detain, arrest, remove – visibly unclean people, and so we too become unclean. But we always promptly wash and purify ourselves again so we can get back to God’s work. Just stepping foot in Bethesda would instantly make me unclean, so it was with great reluctance that I followed Jesus. But in I went.

I’d only ever seen the pools from the safety of the Temple walls, high above the Kidron. On the few occasions I actually looked down upon it, I could see only disease and despair. I never looked long. When the wind was right, you could smell it. Disgusting. But now I was standing in it. As you can imagine, the whole place reeked to high heaven. The stench was the first thing that hit you. Every sort of bodily fluid polluted the ground. None of the people were able to move much, if at all, so they lay in their own urine, feces, vomit, and oozing blood all day and all night. Even covering my nose, I fought to keep my lunch down where it belonged. 

Next, the sound. The incessant moaning of the half-dead blended with the buzzing of a thousand flies to create a ghostly ever-present hum. It was the sound of a battle being slowly lost.

Then, of course, the sight of all the death and disease was overwhelming. Jesus’ followers just stood there, awestruck, in the middle of everything, hands withdrawn, trying not to touch or be touched. There were at least half a dozen withered bodies along the walls that were far too still to be alive. How long had they been dead? God only knows.

The water of the pools themselves was even worse. All the filth of Bethesda drains inward toward the water, where it gets baked by the sun and grows every sort of color. The water that day was black with death. No Jew in his right mind would stick a toe into that putrid mess. It was the definition of unclean. This whole place needed to be leveled and turned into a trash heap. 

But where’s Jesus? I followed the gaze of his followers to the shadow of the far wall and saw him talking to a man on death’s door. I edged closer.

“How long have you been here?” 

“Thirty-eight years,” came the weak reply.

“Do you want to get healthy?”

The old man tried to respond, but his body was wracked with a coughing fit. Blood gurgled up from between his lips. He managed to sputter that he couldn’t get to the pool in time when the angel stirred it up.

Jesus stood up and commanded him, “Get up, pick up your cot and walk.”

What? Are you serious, Jesus? You’re as crazy as the rest of them! But before my very eyes, the impossible happened. The man sat up. Then, with skin-and-bone legs, he miraculously stood. His sickness and frailty were instantly gone. His whole appearance was changed! My jaw dropped. Everyone’s jaws dropped. The man’s eyes lit up, his toothless mouth erupting in a smile. Then he started dancing. What a sight! The almost-dead man was dancing on toothpick legs, and Jesus was laughing out loud!

Then it was mayhem as Jesus was mobbed. Every sick and dying body in all of Bethesda limped, crawled, scrambled, dragged, and rolled up to Jesus’ feet. In the onslaught, I was nearly knocked into the death-water. I shivered in disgust at the thought of falling into it. Get me out of here! As I left through the doorway, I looked back to see more and more people joining in the dance of the redeemed, jumping up and down in excitement. The noise became deafening. Cheering! Singing! A hundred voices praising God.

I quickly made my way back down the hill before anyone recognized me. But I stole a glance up at the massive retaining wall of the Temple. Dozens of heads were peering down at the cacophony inside Bethesda. 

Amazing. There was no other way to describe it. What Jesus did was absolutely amazing. The legend of Bethesda was nothing but a hoax, but the legend of the miracle worker from Galilee was truth in the flesh.